Tree Trimming
by eclecticspaz
Summary: Harriet gets a summer visitor, quirky small talk and mild flirting ensue. Rated T for violent incidents and some crude language/humor.


Tree Trimming

A ParaNorman fan fic

It was a warm June day, and it started out uninterestingly enough. The only thing noteworthy where the screaming summer break children added to the usual hustle-bustle of the local businesses trying to relieve tourists of their disposable income and the rest of the residents puttering off to their daily grind. How ironic was it that Harriet, who couldn't stand mediocrity, complacency or anything redundant in life, spent her days pinned up in her tree watching the living world drift by in death.

Having little to do came with the territory, but her physical limitations were exceptional, even by ghost standards. Sure, she had visitors to chat with, the drama on the street could be entertaining at times, and there was still the living boy, although his availability had a negative correlation with his approach to manhood. It would have been selfish and naïve to expect otherwise, of course, and he did come from a lineage of ghost-talkers, albeit a broken one.

Over the usual hum of the day Harriet heard a village truck pull up the street. It was fitted with a utility lift for overhead work and it towed a hopper with a wood chipper. Workers in fluorescent vests and hard hats were tossing out cones and redirecting traffic while the lift and its occupant went to work with a buzzing chain saw. _That time already, is it? _she smirked cynically.

The deceased skydiver recalled the pruning of previous years with anything but nostalgia. They would come up and invade both her personal space and ectoplasm, and swing that dreaded chainsaw right through her. In the early days before the town acquired the lift, they would advance with ladders, pulleys and ropes. Occasionally Harriet would get a face full of sweaty armpit, or summer-cured crotch if they had to trim higher. _Se la vie_, she shrugged to herself. _Or is that 'Se la moiré'? _A robin chirped overhead as it sped by and a charge of white fluid splattered on the trunk she was impaled on, she grimaced as it leisurely trickled down to her chest. _Great_, she fumed, _turning into one of __**those**__ days_.

She thought that being out in the weather year-round should desensitize her to such things, and as unpleasant as these material contacts still felt, they could no longer physically affect her. In the distance, the workers had already finished feeding the clippings of the first tree to the roaring wood chipper, and were shifting the street cones closer. _One down, three to go_, Harriet sighed. She tried to focus her attention on other happenings, like the trickle of traffic beneath her feet. Her fellow ghosts on the ground glanced up with mild concern and she shrugged back at them with resignation. Mrs. Harrington frowned with helpless sympathy as she paced back down the walk, her smoldering hair and defunct dryer trailed metaphysical smoke behind her.

If there was an upside to being dead, it was that there was little else left to suffer in the world that could be worse. Maybe there was still a Hell, but in the nine decades Harriet had spent in that tree, she had seen nothing worse than the usual horrors of the world. Mrs. Harrington's untimely end occurred indoors, so the worst thing to witness was the occasional drunken tourist passed out in the gutter, decorated in his own vomit and urine. Well, that and the stray animals caught between a pair of headlights at night. Then there was that nasty fight with the street punks, and that old man who was mugged there in the seventies, and that girl who took something called angel dust and jumped off a roof. Then Harriet recalled the stupid teenager who forgot that he had just spilled charcoal lighter on himself and lit up a smoke. Actually, that _was_ quite horrible, even though the dumb ass survived with some scars after quickly tearing off his clothes and spending some quality time in the county burn unit.

Harriet stopped and pulled herself from her gruesome digression. Ghost or not, the weather was just too fair to go wandering off on some morbid tangent. The tree trimmers would probably be done with this street at the end of the day, and she could get back to 'business' as usual. She was so caught up in her thoughts that the truck surprised her when it finally pulled up. The ghost watched the men bicker and scatter beneath her, throwing out their cones and waving their arms. She sensed the shadow of the lift fall over her as it approached, its joints hummed and hissed as it closed in. She decided not to look up, not yet, lest she endure the sight of some bruiser sticking his hands through her and swinging that dreadful power tool in her face.

"Hey, Harriet."

The heiress shot her head up with a gasp at the familiar voice as if she'd seen a ghost herself.

"Aiehhhgh! Norman!" she swung a little as she shouted, "what are you doing?!"

"Routine maintenance, Ma'am," he replied in a hammy announcer voice, then slid his hard hat back slightly with his utility gloves and drew his sun glasses up until those blue-gray eyes twinkled at her coyly.

He reeked of sweat and sun block, and fumes from his power saw mixed with it. "So," he shifted his posture to one side so that he leaned on the railing of the lift's basket. "how's it hangin'?"

"You're never going to let that one go, are you?" Harriet put her hands on her hips in feigned confrontation.

Norman straightened up as he laughed. "Are you kidding? How can I? It's so dumb and cliché, I _have_ to use it."

Harriet smiled with a thick 'humph'. "I take it this is your new summer job."

"Sho' am," he cooed in a mock hillbilly drawl. "I wanted to hang back this year, keep close with some friends, so Dad pulled some strings in the contractor circles and, poof! I'm a tree trimmer." He struck up the corniest pose he could muster with the chain saw, and added a stupid grin.

"And how are _they_ taking this?" she pointed at his coworkers below who pretended not to notice his conversation with the tree.

"Oh, it's cool. I told them I'd be a while at this stop, and that I'd be talking to myself a lot. The older guys know about me, and they just tell the new ones that I'm bat shit insane, so it all works out." Norman shrugged, which got a chuckle out of Harriet. His eyes fell on the 'white wash' of her branch. "Ihh," he remarked, "speaking of shit," he fumbled the pockets on his vest for his sweat rag.

"Uh, Norman," the ghost nervously indicated that the offending spot was at her bust line.

"Oh. Uh, can you back up any?" his face flushed slightly.

"I hang in a tree for ninety years and you ask me if I can 'back up'. Really, Norman?" she gave a look that was part sneer, part smirk as she folded her arms. "Take a look _through_ me, like everyone else does, my dear medium." She pointed behind her with her thumb at all the dry white splotches on the branches that had long since crusted over.

"Hoo," Norman gaped as he raised his shades again. "They've just been carpet bombing you, haven't they?"

Harriet laughed and blew a raspberry simultaneously. "Doesn't stain, see?" she held out her limbs sideways to show off her pristine flight suit. "That's very sweet of you to notice, though." Her voice shed its sarcasm as she drew herself back in and trained her eyes on his tinted lenses. "I've never seen you up this close. You look great, kiddo, what're you now, a Junior?"

Norman shyly rubbed the back of his neck. "Uh, likewise, thanks and yes, I was?" he sheepishly smiled. "You're not exactly hard on the eyes, yourself," he added, "if it's not too personal, how old were you?"

"Old enough to look like a dirty old broad saddled next to a punk like you," she swatted his arm playfully, knowing his remark was more small talk than flattery.

Norman's eyes widened slightly at the familiar, cold, electrical pinch, surprised that the immobile ghost had such physical leverage. "Wow," he remarked, "didn't know you were that kind of apparition."

"Ooh." Harriet interjected with some embarrassment. "I forgot about that, that didn't hurt, did it?"

"Not at all," he rushed to retain her good mood, "it's just, don't take this wrong, I just figured with you being up here that you wouldn't have a lot of poltergeist in you."

"Poltergeist, huh?" she plucked a green leaf just above her. "I never thought of it that way. It's not like I throw things, raise the dead or make monster storms." She let the leaf go and watched it glide down to the ground crew. "Not like your little Puritan friend, huh?" she shrugged beguilingly.

Norman smiled mildly at Agatha's mention. Then the young man and the ghost peered down at the subtle restlessness rising up from the ground workers. "Um, sorry, Harry, I gotta get to it," he explained with a hint of urgency, "village tax dollars at work, you know." Harriet nodded as he fired up the chain saw and looked over the edge of his basket. "Okay, guys, incoming," he yelled. They both remained quiet over the roaring din, Norman trimmed off whatever bore signs of storm or insect damage and watched for any other instructive cues from below. Because he could see Harriet, he took care not to run the saw through her and tried to keep a respectable arm's length. Spraying splinters and sawdust aside, this was certainly the most pleasant tree pruning she had endured, and lamented the probability that it wouldn't be repeated; Norman just didn't strike her as the landscape maintenance type.

Still, she couldn't help feeling happy for the boy, he seemed to be doing well coming into his own in spite of his 'gift' and ghoulish interests, he looked sane and well adjusted for a teen. Many in her generation would have scoffed at his middlebrow upbringing, but he was quite the gentleman, even as a young child. Harriet couldn't make up her mind whether his affinity for bad jokes subtracted or added to his appeal.

"Well, Harry," Norman shut off the saw, "looks like you're set for a while."

"Too bad," she pretended to examine her fingernails, "I rather like you from this view."

"Thanks," he blushed again, "maybe we can do this again without the pruning."

"Only if you won't wind up in court or the hospital," the ghost chided, knowing his history of compulsive and dangerous behavior on behalf of the dead. She reached over and took his free hand into hers. "and no getting killed, either." she sternly added, wondering if that was redundant to someone who was personally aware of an afterlife.

"Deal," he reassured, and turned her gesture into a handshake.

"You're so weird," she chuckled as she withdrew her hand.

"I get that a lot," he winked and made a hand signal to the operator. The lift began to buzz and grind again as it pulled him away. They watched one another as he dipped beneath the leafy branches. "See ya, Harriet," he waved.

"Bye, Norman," she called back, "stay out of trouble."

"I'll try," his voice faded into the ambience of the street. The crew disbanded and pulled up to the tree behind her. As the day marched on the commotion faded, and Harriet was left alone with her thoughts and the birds once again. The smoking form of Mrs. Harrington reappeared as white light turned to amber.

"Those goons done pawing at you, Harriet?" the slouching ghost hollered up the tree.

"Yes, sadly," her smile was slow and brooding, "you wouldn't believe who called."

Fin, beeches.


End file.
